Charles Josiah Galpin papers, A1071

Charles Josiah Galpin was an 1885 graduate of Colgate University and a noted figure in the fields of rural sociology and agricultural economics.

He was born in Hamilton, New York, on March 16, 1864, and attended preparatory school at Colgate Academy, graduating in 1881. He came to Madison University, later known as Colgate University, from Canandaigua and graduated with the college class of 1885. Galpin earned a Master's degree from Harvard University in 1895, and received an honorary doctorate in literature from Colgate in 1919. He studied rural education in Denmark in 1914 and held a number of leadership positions in the fields of rural agriculture and sociology. These included serving with the Bureau of Agriculture in Washington, DC, honorary president of the American Country Life Association, Vice President of the American Sociological Society, and United States delegate to the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome.

Galpin was an associate professor in the department of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin from 1911-1919, where he was in charge of country life work and rural sociology. Prior to this, his positions included teacher at Union Academy in Belleville (1885-1888); professor of history and English at Kalamazoo College (1888-1891); principal at Union Academy (1891-1901); businessman in Delvan, Wisconsin (1900-1904); University Pastor for Baptists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1905-1911); and lecturer in the summer school of religion in Madison (1909-1912).

After leaving Wisconsin, Galpin began a position with the United States Department of Agriculture. He retired in 1934 as head of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Life in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. He died on June 1, 1947.

Elmer William Smith, ed. Colgate University General Catalogue, vol. 2, (Hamilton, NY: Colgate University, 1939), 77.